Childfare – fair fares for under-18s

We’re launching our Childfare campaign in the week that 16-year-olds across the country get their GCSE results.

We know how hard everyone has had to work for these results and hopefully waiting for the outcome hasn’t ruined the summer.

Many of us will have been relaxing over the past weeks, going on holidays and outings and will be only too aware of the issues that we’re raising here.

Our own experiences and the start of our on-going Childfare research project show how expensive it can be for 16-year-olds and their families when so many places want to charge adult fares and prices to under-18s.

Fair fares

Here’s just one example – Warner Bros studio tour, home of “The making of Harry Potter”. It charges 15-year-olds £8 less than 16-year-olds. If one of the two children in a family has turned 16, the household is no longer eligible for the £107 family-of-four ticket any more. Instead, they’re charged £132 – that’s £25 more! That is not a fair fare.

Some of the biggest attractions in the UK start their adult tickets at ridiculous ages. Alton Towers is 12+, as are Drayton Manor and Thorpe Park.

In a couple of weeks most of us will be back to education – some will be going into apprenticeships and training – but across the country, very few of us will be in a full-time job, and certainly not in England, where the rules now make that impossible. There’s a very strong case for arguing that the world has changed – we don’t get full-time jobs at 16 any more, so why are we charged as adults?

Sophie and I met through our passion to bring change and we’d like to bring others together – teenagers and their parents – for the same reason.